It is common in practice to have a set of articles, such as beverage containers or the like, grouped together in a bundle held together by shrink film in order to prevent the set from shifting or from coming undone during further handling or during transport. From the prior art, bundles are known that comprise four, six, or more containers, for example. Such bundles are very commonly used as sales units for beverage containers or bottles of PET plastic. In order to achieve a high throughput for packaging and/or for subsequent palletizing, it is desirable to assemble such bundles as quickly as possible without interrupting the individual process steps.
In order to provide packaging material or shrink film for wrapping bundles partly or completely, apparatuses and methods are already known that unwind the material from a roll or from a plurality of rolls, convey the material within a packaging machine, and wrap the packaging material around the individual bundles or the particular articles intended to form such bundles. In this context, the unwinding of the packaging material from the roll is usually carried out by machine and, in preferred embodiments, performed in a continuous process. Apparatuses are known in which the packaging material is extracted via rollers from the meanwhile rotating roll. After a roll is depleted and the supply of packaging material is exhausted, that particular roll has to be exchanged or replaced with a new roll.
A method and an apparatus are known, for example, from DE 40 40 545 A1, by which new reels can be supplied and used-up reels can be replaced. This known apparatus has a plurality of stock reels arranged side by side for supplying strip material. The core of the reels is in each case positioned on a common pin. A beginning section of the strip material is previously brought into contact with a roller, which extracts the strip material from the particular reel and guides it in a downward direction away from the apparatus. In order to be able to operate this known apparatus and to unwind the material from the reel, the reel has to be positioned rotation-direction-conformingly with its core on the pin. The strip material or, as the case may be, the first layer of the strip material has to dip down, coming from above, toward the rollers. If the roll were positioned on the pin in counter-rotating direction, the strip material could not, or only with difficulty, be extracted from the reel, which would result in complications for unwinding. According to the direction of rotation of the newly positioned reels, it is necessary in these known apparatuses to manually transpose and rotation-conformingly reposition the reels in order to ensure disruption-free operation.
Apparatuses for the automatic supply of material wound onto rolls, and for the replacement of used-up rolls in processing or packaging machines, are moreover known in various embodiments, for example, as apparatuses for supplying and replacing spools with tape material in a processing machine according to DE 32 02 647 A1 or according to DE 41 42 256 A1.
DE 34 25 734 A1 discloses an automated facility for supplying packaging material to production lines and/or packaging lines. The facility comprises a magazine for the packaging material and a carriage equipped with an articulated arm for taking hold of the packaging material and supplying it to the processing machines located along the processing lines. The carriage with the articulated arm moves along lanes, which can be determined by a computer system that is linked to the processing machines.
A device for providing packaging machines with consumables or with packaging material is furthermore known from EP 1 273 541 B1. The material webs are supplied wound onto reels, which are stacked on pallets, and distributed to a plurality of production and packaging machines, with the pallets first being brought to intermediate stores by pallet conveyors, while individual reels are removed by separate reel conveyors and transported to a machine to be supplied.
DE 10 2006 017 379 A1 discloses a device for handling reels of packaging material. The device comprises a reel storage with a gantry where the reels are provided on pallets. A gantry robot with articulated arm transfers reels as required to reeling systems disposed outside of the gantry. From the reeling systems, the material webs are transported to opposite sides in a direction parallel to the longitudinal extension of the gantry to the machines using the material.
The known handling methods and handling apparatuses generally require accurate positioning and feeding of new reels or rolls with packaging material wound thereonto. If it is not possible to ensure such accurate positioning, the smooth replacement of used-up rolls is jeopardized and the proper functioning of the packaging machine can no longer be ensured.